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Conquest, Empire, Impact, and Context:
The Early Islamic Empire in a Medieval World-System
Chelsea Miller
Class of 2014
An Undergraduate Thesis Submitted
in Partial Fulfillment for a
Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors
Department of History
Mount Holyoke College
January 17, 2014
Acknowledgements
Firstly, I would like to thank my family and friends for their lasting
support throughout my final semesters at Mount Holyoke. They not only
endured my manic days spent writing in various libraries and student
lounges, but also granted me the momentum to continue on my journey of
research when it seemed as if the process would never end.
Second, I would like to give thanks to Holly Sharac and Professor Holly
Hanson of the History Department, who provided me with endless space and
guidance during this endeavor.
Lastly, I am eternally grateful to Professors Robert Schwartz and Sean
Gilsdorf for agreeing to advise the independent study projects that
culminated in this thesis. Professor Schwartz encouraged me to work little by
little on a project on fiscal reforms and tax revolts in early Islamic Egypt
through the most difficult semester of my undergraduate career. Professor
Gilsdorf agreed to take on my project during my final semester at Mount
Holyoke, and challenged me to expand my historiographic horizons into
medieval European history to find an answer to my question, “what does
‘medieval’ even mean?”
Contents
INTRODUCTION Henri Pirenne and the End of Antiquity
1
CONQUEST The Early Islamic Empire: Transition and Transformation
6
EMPIRE Umayyad Consolidation and Reform
25
IMPACT The Early Islamic Empire and the Mediterranean
38
CONTEXT Narrating the End of Antiquity
65
APPENDIX Maps 78 Works Cited 85
1
Introduction | Henri Pirenne and the End of Antiquity
The boundary between antiquity and the medieval period has historically
been defined as the transition from the “fall” of the Roman Empire to a post-
Roman period of economic and cultural decline. The medieval period is
considered to be the time between the fifth and the fifteenth centuries.
Although the transitions from antiquity to the Middle Ages (and beyond)
varied in nature and timing based on location and circumstance, the general
cause of this transition is typically attributed to the Germanic invasions of
the fourth and fifth centuries. Beginning with the work of eighteenth-century
English historian Edward Gibbon, and continuing through the medieval
history narratives of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers, this
boundary organized – and indeed, still does – the dominant narrative of the
beginning of the medieval period.
Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(1776-1789) illustrated the history of the Roman Empire and its legacy from
the first century to the mid-fifteenth century. Gibbon’s History illuminated
the many actors, phenomena and events that he interpreted to have
contributed to the end of the cultural and economic cohesiveness of the
Roman Empire. Gibbon divided the chronology of Roman decline into three
periods: the first from the age of Trajan and the Antonines to the invasions of
the “barbarians of Germany and Scythia”; the second from the reign of
Justinian to the Lombard Invasions of Italy, the Islamic conquests of former
2
Roman and Byzantine provinces, and the rise of Charlemagne’s empire in
Western Europe; and, lastly, the several centuries between Charlemagne’s
coronation and the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in the fifteenth
century.1
Belgian Historian Henri Pirenne (1862-1935) contributed what is known
as the “Pirenne Thesis” to the study of medieval European history. In
Mohammed and Charlemagne (1939), Pirenne rejected the dominant
narrative of historians such as Gibbon. Instead, Pirenne defined the end of
antiquity as the onset of the seventh-century Islamic invasions into former
Roman and Byzantine territories. Pirenne traced the origins of medieval
Europe to isolation, urban decay, and commercial decline that he suggested
occurred in Europe following the rise of the Islamic Empire. In contrast, later
scholars, such as Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse (1983), have argued
that commercial and urban decline began long before the expansion of the
Islamic Empire. Michael McCormick (2001), for example, has taken a further
step in suggesting that the transitions that occurred in Western Europe,
especially Carolingian France, were part of a broader system connected by
communication networks.
The consolidation of the early Islamic Empire reveals that reorganization
of pre-existing structures and creation of new institutions occurred in the
Mediterranean world. An innovative combination of old and new institutions,
1 Edward Gibbon, “Preface,” in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 1 (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776)
3
networks, and urban forms in the Mediterranean provides evidence that a
new world-system had emerged. Pirenne’s attention to the economic
networks of the Mediterranean world has influenced my geographical focus. I
have chosen to focus on the land masses that surround the Mediterranean
Sea, which operated as a venue for cross-cultural interactions – both
conflicting and coexisting – during the ancient and medieval periods.
Through the lens of the early Islamic Empire, I will attempt to re-illustrate
the medieval world as an integrated world, as opposed to several isolated
systems. Early Islamic economic growth, urban development, and
administrative reforms had far-reaching effects on its peripheries and
beyond.
I will attempt to juxtapose against the Pirenne Thesis an image of the
early Islamic Empire within a new Mediterranean world-system. Map 1
illustrates a majority of the places within this system named within this
paper.2 Early Islamic economic growth, urban development, and
administrative reforms had far-reaching effects on the empire's peripheries
and frontiers. In placing the Islamic Empire at the center of my study of the
early medieval world, I hope to facilitate a discussion of the “Middle Ages”
and the “End of Antiquity” that is not weighed down by stories of Western
catastrophe, but instead focused on the transformation and redirection of
resource flows and administrative power.
2 Map 1 in Appendix, page 78
4
First, I will define the changes which occurred within the Islamic world
and the relationships between urban development, economic networks, and
resource flows in this medieval empire. Next, I will examine the impact of
these changes beyond the Islamic Empire's peripheries and frontiers:
broadly, what effects did the growth and successes of the early Islamic
Empire have on the Mediterranean? Did the Islamic Empire influence
significant changes upon the Mediterranean and Europe?
I will outline what major changes occurred, if any, in Byzantium, Italy and
Tunisia, Carolingian France, and al-Andalus throughout the late antique and
early medieval periods. Historical and archaeological studies produced by
Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse, Michael McCormick, and others will
reveal the sequence of changes which occurred in the Mediterranean in the
early medieval period. I will then attempt to determine to what extent the
Islamic Empire was responsible for these changes.
Lastly, I aim to contextualize the Islamic Empire within the
historiographic debates surrounding the End of Antiquity, the Fall of the
West, and the Rise of Islam by highlighting the main arguments of historians
such as Henri Pirenne, Edward Gibbon, Bryan Ward-Perkins, Peter Heather,
and Adrian Goldsworthy. This debate contributes to a study of the Islamic
Empire in two ways: first, it can illustrate how the early Islamic Empire
expanded into and changed the Mediterranean world. Pirenne's Islamic
Empire, for example, wrought calamity on the West. Second, this context
5
illuminates the ways in which the narrative of the Rise of Islam by Western
historians romanticizes the Roman legacy and imposes catastrophe on this
history.
I do not intend to enter the debate over how Rome fell or if Rome ever
fell, except to say that explanations for the rise of the Islamic Empire should
not center upon Rome. As a result of this study, I hope to expand on the
conclusions of Henri Pirenne’s thesis that the rise of the Islamic Empire
brought profound social and economic changes upon the Mediterranean
world, changes which facilitated the emergence of Charlemagne’s empire.
However, I argue that Pirenne’s thesis is incomplete. The expansion and
consolidation of the Islamic Empire in the seventh and eighth centuries did
induce change in the Mediterranean, but the Islamic Empire was not
responsible for many other transformations in Europe and the
Mediterranean.
6
Conquest | The Early Islamic Empire: Transition and Transformation
From Byzantine Hegemony to the Islamic Conquests
The division of the east and west Mediterranean between two Roman
empires appears to mark the beginning of the process of restructuring within
the early medieval Mediterranean world. Maps 3 and 4 illustrate the
transition from a united Roman Empire in 300 C.E. to the later division of the
Mediterranean between the Western and Eastern Roman Empires in 400
C.E.3 From the late fourth and fifth centuries onwards, the Byzantine (or East
Roman) Empire exerted political and economic control over much of the
eastern Mediterranean.4 By 600 C.E., the Byzantine Empire controlled a
substantial number of territories under earlier Roman rule, spreading from
Asia Minor, Syria-Palestine, and Egypt to the coasts of North Africa and the
southern Iberian Peninsula. Map 6 demonstrates the extent of the Byzantine
Empire at 600 C.E.5
Egypt provides a useful case study for the changes that occurred in the
Mediterranean world during the early medieval period. Egypt was a unified
political entity under the Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic Empires, and
maintained communication and economic networks throughout the
Mediterranean region after each political transition. Under the Byzantine
Empire, Egypt continued to function largely as a breadbasket territory,
3 Maps 3 and 4 in Appendix, page 80 4 Map 5 in Appendix, page 81 5 Map 6 in Appendix, page 81
7
funneling wealth in the form of taxes (money and wheat) toward
Constantinople, the Byzantine imperial center, instead of Rome. This was a
continuation of the Roman annona system, in which the great consumer city
of Rome depended entirely upon the agricultural productivity of Roman
provinces for its grain supply. Byzantine control over Egypt, along with its
other peripheral territories, crumbled during the early seventh century,
however, due to internal political conflicts, external threats of invasion and
war with Sassanid Persia, and the devastating effects of plague.
In the aftermath of two coups d’état at the turn of the seventh century,
Egypt experienced more violence than any other province between the years
of 608 and 610 C.E.6 This violence especially took the form of battles
between the supporters of Phokas and those of Heraclius, who secured
power in 608. These violent battles and political upheaval made Byzantine
peripheries vulnerable to invasion, especially in 616, when Sassanid Persia
invaded Egypt, occupying the territory until 629. While the Byzantine Empire
regained its highly valued territory through a treaty with the Sassanids, this
invasion and subsequent occupation further disrupted Roman/Byzantine
hegemonic continuity.
Such internal weakening and disorganization provided an opportunity for
the expansion of the Islamic Empire into Byzantine peripheries, including
Egypt. Indeed, Peter Sarris argues that further military resentment at
6 Walter E. Kaegi, “Egypt on the Eve of the Muslim Conquest,” in The Cambridge History of Egypt, Vol. 1: Islamic Egypt 640-1517, edited by Carl F. Petry (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 37
8
imperial economizing measures may have contributed to the overthrow of
Emperor Maurice by Phokas and subsequent bloody civil wars. The reign of
Maurice had witnessed two revolts in Egypt: the first resulted after an
attempted removal of the emperor from office by members of a powerful
Egyptian family, and the second involved the seizure of imperial tax revenues
by a private army.7 Justinian’s reforms placed him at odds with the landed
aristocracy, who held considerable local power. In addition, later
decentralization of the Byzantine Empire, which featured a diminished
central imperial authority, led to destabilizing effects, according to John of
Nikiu. Sarris further suggests that these tensions, in addition to the fall of
Syria, Palestine, and Egypt to the Sasanians weakened the powers of
Byzantine rule and facilitated the Arab conquests of the 630s and 640s.8
The expansion and reforms enacted by the early Islamic Empire in the
mid-to-late- seventh and early eighth centuries reveal the process by which
different parts of a pre-existing system were restructured and reformed. In
particular, tax reforms in early Islamic Egypt and city building throughout
the empire especially reveal both change and continuity at regional and
imperial levels. Looking at the early medieval Mediterranean as a world
system that underwent reorganization during this period helps to explain the
conflicting processes of change and continuity that have been observed, and
bear witness to the impacts of the early Islamic Empire on its peripheries.
7 Peter Sarris. Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 229 8 Sarris (2006), 229
9
The Role of Cities in Imperial Expansion
Michael Doyle defines “empire” as a system of interaction between
two political entities, in which a dominant metropole exerts effective political
sovereignty, in terms of internal and external policy, of a subordinate
periphery.9 Imperial rulers in the past have frequently boasted unlimited
powers. These powers have, however, often been limited to waging war,
levying taxes, and extracting tribute. In many historical empires, the city held
an important role as a site of authority and of the transmission of resources
and ideas.
Cities can have a variety of functions: central ruling sites and symbols
of power; outposts of commerce or rule; military encampments; or any
combination of the above.10 Often, as urban historian Derek Keene suggests,
“it is the conquest or control of a city rather than its territory that confers or
enhances imperial status.”11 For example, the struggles for dominance over
Alexandria in Egypt in the 640s dictated which empire, Byzantine or Islamic,
maintained control over the province. Cities, thus, have an important role in
the transition from one empire to the next.
An imperial ruler could express ideas of imperial unity and authority by
erecting institutions and buildings which overlaid indigenous features but
did not wholly extinguish them. The key architectural features historically
9 Michael Doyle, Empires (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 12 10 Derek Keene, “Cities and Empires,” in Journal of Urban History 32:1 (2005), 8 11 Keene (2005), 9
10
found in urban seats of imperial authority, Keene explains, include a palace,
offices for bureaucrats and officials, and temples of an imperial cult or its
equivalent. Subordinate cities in an imperial hierarchy often replicated or
echoed these characteristics. Conquering empires, in addition, tend to
appropriate and transform the pre-existing indigenous institutions through a
process of structural experimentation and reorganization. These imperial
structures would not necessarily eliminate local institutions, but would
enable an imperial state to exert a certain level of authority over subject
groups.
The Roman Empire, for example, displayed a standardized repertoire
of structures, including forums, basilicas, theatres, temples, and
amphitheaters. These structures were paid for both by public funds and
private benefactors, but increasingly became viewed as a source of civic and
imperial identity supported by taxation.12 In early Islamic cities, these
defining structures included the governor’s palace or residential complex
and a mosque. In addition, markets and water supply infrastructures often
played a prominent role in city planning and the success (or decline) of urban
centers. The transition from post-Roman to early Islamic urbanism
introduced a new urban form to the eastern Mediterranean, and facilitated
changes in the structures/infrastructures of commercial and communication
networks in the early medieval Mediterranean.
12 Keene (2005), 14
11
Transformation of Urban Space
Early Islamic cities represent a transition in urban form during the
seventh and eighth centuries, offering evidence of ongoing structural
experimentation and reorganization. In his “How to Found an Islamic City,”
Hugh Kennedy provides an especially useful overview of the foundation of
four early Islamic cities: Kūfa, Fusṭāṭ, Wāsit, and Ramla. Similarly, Donald
Whitcomb’s “The Miṣr of Ayla: Settlement at al-‘Aqaba in the Early Islamic
Period” describes the overall plan of Ayla within the context of early Islamic
urban planning, focusing on the amṣār.
These early cities were established to support already present settlers,
especially members of the army and their families, in need of housing and
resources. In later Islamic cities, however, economic opportunities were
often provided to attract inhabitants. In most early Islamic cities, primary
features were laid out first, and the cities developed organically from those
frameworks in later periods. The earliest amṣār began as garrisons, which
were deliberately created to settle Arab Muslim troops and their families in
locations where they would not come into conflict (or assimilate) with the
area’s existing inhabitants, and where they could be controlled and paid for
by agents of the state.13
These settlements originally consisted of tented encampments that were
soon replaced by permanent structures. The amṣār became, as Whitcomb
13 Hugh Kennedy, “How to Found an Islamic City,” in Cities, Texts and Social Networks, 400-1500: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 47
12
suggested, settlements of a “type intermediate” between the military camp
and the metropolis, as structures with residential, religious, and political
functions.14 Early Islamic amṣār also became sites of economic exchange. The
existence of a concentrated, salaried body of settlers could only be sustained
by economic relationships with areas located outside of the urban space. For
example, Kūfa functioned as the center of a regional agricultural base, while
‘Aqaba operated as an entrepôt of interregional commerce. Three important
aspects characterized the establishment of these early cities: the foundation
of a miṣr occurred on new land, avoiding older urban settlements; conversion
from encampments to permanent and sophisticated architecture was rapid
and extensive; and almost all of these foundations, Whitcomb explained,
were successful and enduring.
Early Islamic settlements contained axial roads, residential areas, and
institutional centers containing a mosque, a palace complex for officials (dār
al-imāra), and a space reserved for a market (sūq). For example, ‘Anjar in
southern Lebanon, dated to the Umayyad period, contained towered walls,
axial streets, a central tetrapylon structure, and a mosque and dār al-imāra in
the southeast quadrant.15 Under this urban form, various functions –
administrative/political, commercial, residential, and religious – were
located together in the same area. This form was profoundly different from
14 Donald Whitcomb, “The Misr of Ayla: Settlement at al-‘Aqaba in the Early Islamic Period,” in The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, II: Land Use and Settlement Patterns, edited by G.R.D. King and Averil Cameron (Princeton: Darwin, 1994), 167 15 Whitcomb, 167
13
what is viewed as a traditionally Roman organization of urban space,
indicated by a distinct separation between public and private space, and
between commercial/industrial and civic space. Civic centers in the Roman
imperial style consisted of monumental colonnaded streets connecting public
monuments with city gates.
The town of Baysān16, in northern Israel, illustrates the gradual transition
away from the Roman style of urban organization. Hugh Kennedy has shown
that this transition began as early as the sixth century. At this point,
monumental construction declined, major colonnaded streets were
“encroached,” and private shops appeared in previously spacious
walkways.17 The Persian invasion of 614 and the Islamic conquest of 636,
Gideon Avni explains, left no direct trace in the archaeological record of the
town. It seems, then, that the Islamic conquests had no tragic impact on
urban life in the eastern Mediterranean city.
An earthquake in 659/660 C.E., however, had devastating effects for the
city center, in which large parts were destroyed and subsequently
abandoned. Restoration occurred in many areas of the civic center, and the
center began to take on a new form, through the implementation of new
urban patterns and concepts. Under new Islamic leadership – specifically
during the caliphal reign of Hishām b. ‘Abd al-Malik (723-743), sites of small
16 Baysān has also been referred to as Scythopolis (late antique), Beth Shean (Byzantine), Baisān, and Beit She'an. I have opted to use the name and transliterated form Baysān to refer to this town, because Kennedy uses this form in “How to Found an Islamic City”. 17 Gideon Avni, “‘From Polis to Madina’ Revisited – Urban Change in Byzantine and early Islamic Palestine,” in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 21:3 (2011), 305
14
industries and commerce were introduced into the formerly open, public
space. From the sixth through the eighth centuries, therefore, conceptual
changes in urban form occurred. The urban spatial arrangement of Baysān
transformed from the Roman legacy of monumental “clean” construction to a
“lively crowded area, with mixed functions of commerce, small industries,
public and private constructions.”18
Construction: New “Islamic” Cities and Towns
As possibly the oldest of the amṣār, Baṣra was founded around 635 by
‘Utba b. Ghazwan near the port of Ubulla and the fortified villages of
Khurayba.19 A port to the east connected Basra by two canals to Shaṭṭ al-
‘Arab, a river formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. To the
west lay an open area, and subsequent expansion of the city would occur in
this space. The city itself was organized by a rectangular plan that continued
as the city later extended out to the west. A central square held the mosque
and the administrative residential complex (dār al-imāra). In 665, Ziyād
restructured these buildings: he expanded the mosque and shifted the dār al-
imāra from the northeastern to the qibla side of the mosque.
Caliph ‘Umar b. al-Khaṭṭāb and Sa’d b. Abī Waqqāṣ, army commander and
governor of Iraq, began Kūfa’s foundation in 638, immediately after the
conquest of Iraq.20 The governor wrote to ‘Umar regularly, both asking his
18 Avni (2011), 306 19 Whitcomb (1994), 161-162 20 Kennedy (2010), 48
15
opinion and receiving the caliph’s instructions. The governor had sent scouts
to survey the area, and decided that the site of Kūfa would suit the imperial
army’s needs. Another figure, Abū’l-Hayyāj b. Malik, oversaw the plans for
laying out the settlement. ‘Umar deeply immersed himself in the city’s
founding, as he dictated the measurements of a hierarchy of streets around
which the city would form. Next, a mosque was constructed in the center of
the city, surrounded by an open, square space to ensure its accessibility.
Along the qibla side of the mosque, facing Mecca, the governor’s palace stood.
‘Umar demanded that markets should be organized along the same lines
as mosques, and thus Kūfa’s markets were situated around the mosque and
the palace. Markets, therefore, held considerable importance as part of the
city’s social and administrative space. Salaried soldiers and other elites could
purchase goods, and merchants or vendors could acquire cash (or other
forms of currency) with which they could pay taxes to the state. The state,
then, could use these funds to engage in further development projects.
No mentions of street planning appear in literary sources which describe
the Egyptian garrison city of Fusṭāṭ. Robert Kennedy infers, therefore, that
Fusṭāṭ required less planning than Kūfa.21 Excavations have shown that the
early design of Fusṭāṭ followed an orthogonal plan.22 The settlement was
placed next to the older Roman and Byzantine legionary fort of Babylon. The
Egyptian army commander and governor ‘Amr b. al-Āṣ is said to have
21 Kennedy (2010) 52 22 Whitcomb (1994), 163
16
founded the main mosque, located in the center of the city alongside the dār
al-imāra. Settlements of Muslim elites surrounded the mosque. No
documents mention an official governor’s palace, but Kennedy suggests that
early elites likely built these individual houses.23 Other large houses or
compounds were built with public funds and intermittently used as a
governor’s residence.
In nearby Isṭabl ‘Antar, south of the old fortress of Babylon and
uninhabited at the time of the Arab conquest, archaeological excavations led
by Roland-Pierre Gayraud (1987-1989) reveal the early development of the
site. 24 The first traces of habitation were a tented encampment and holes in
the rocky ground surface, probably tethering points for animals. Permanent
houses soon replaced the encampment. Houses discovered at the site were
dated to the second half of the seventh century, immediately after the
conquest of Egypt. In addition, the earliest aqueduct for this area has been
dated to 680-700 C.E., indicating the presence of an early Umayyad
development project. Isṭabl ‘Antar was clearly created as a residential site to
house the Arab Muslim migrants to Fusṭāṭ.
In 703 C.E., the governor of Iraq and the Eastern provinces al-Ḥajjāj b.
Yūsūf began the development of Wāsiṭ, located about halfway between Kūfa
and Basra. Al-Ḥajjāj b. Yūsūf constructed the site to function as a base for
Syrian troops that the governor relied upon to control Iraq. The city’s
23 Kennedy (2010), 52 24 Kennedy (2010), 52-53
17
construction, Kennedy suggests, was part of a larger development project
enacted by the Umayyad Caliphate. Al-Ḥajjāj b. Yūsūf began by building
numerous new irrigation canals, which consisted of bringing in workmen for
labor and reviving the surrounding agricultural land. The city’s central
mosque was surrounded by open spaces, and outside of these spaces were
located the commercial center, blacksmiths, butchers, and a racecourse. The
palace (qaṣr) was twice the size of the mosque, at over two hundred meters
on each side. The main public works, palace, two moats, and wall at Wāsiṭ are
reported to have cost forty million dirhams, which cost more than Al-Ḥajjāj b.
Yūsūf’s military campaigns in Iraq.25
The miṣr of Ayla, located adjacent to a (largely unstudied) pre-Islamic
town that Whitcomb called “Ailana” to distinguish it from early Islamic Ayla,
was established at the head of the gulf of ‘Aqaba on the Red Sea, between
Ailana and the coastline. Whitcomb suggested that Ayla was founded during
the caliphal reign of ‘Uthman (644-656), but Alan Walmsley has argued
instead that architectural traditions and the pro-expansionist economic
policies of the Marwānid dynasty suggests that Ayla was established in the
early eighth century.26 Ayla was a fortified complex, occupied for over four
hundred years, beginning in the mid-seventh century. Its original plan,
Whitcomb explained, borrowed many formal elements of Byzantine style:
25 Kennedy (2010), 54 26 Alan Walmsley, “Production, exchange, and regional trade in the Islamic East Mediterranean: old structures, new systems?” in The Long Eighth Century, edited by Inge Lyse Hansen and Chris Wickham (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 296
18
monumental arched gateways joined by axial streets, an arched tetrapylon at
the streets’ intersection, an orthogonal design, and massive towers based on
earlier, pre-Islamic prototypes.
Excavations at ‘Aqaba between 1986 and 1989 revealed that Ayla was a
small, rectangular settlement, measuring 170 by 140 meters, marked by axial
streets and divided into four quadrants. The location of Ayla’s mosque was
uncertain at the time of Whitcomb’s 1994 publication, but if Ayla resembled
any other early Islamic cities at all, the placement of the mosque likely
followed similar patterns. Whitcomb speculated that Ayla, like other early
Islamic amṣār, appropriated pre-Islamic styles of urban design. The early
amṣār, he suggested, resembled Roman and Byzantine legionary camps in
their general form.
In Palestine, Ramla’s foundation followed a similar trajectory. Governor
Sulaymān b. ‘Abd al-Malik (Caliph 715-717 C.E.), brother of Caliph al-Walīd
(705-715 C.E.) built a residence for himself and a capital for the province at
Ramla in 705 C.E.27 The governor intended for Ramla to function as a center
where taxes could be collected and salaries could be paid. He constructed a
palace, a structure called the House of the Dyers (Dār al-Ṣabbāghīn), and a
mosque. The governor paid for the construction himself, which was
documented by al-Baṭrīq b. al-Nakā, a Christian secretary the governor hired
to supervise his state expenses. In addition, the governor initiated the
27 Kennedy (2010), 55
19
construction of an irrigation canal (qanāt) to secure water supply for the
population.
In sum, the authority of the state in the person of Sulaymān built and paid
for the palace, mosque, and commercial center. The state paid for the
construction and maintenance of the water supply. New inhabitants were
given lots and could build houses at their own expense. The success of the
town, Kennedy continues, was based on its establishment as a miṣr, a place of
government expenditure, and the existence of a body of salaried soldiers and
bureaucrats to attract settlers and markets. This pattern clearly was not
unique to Ramla: the foundation of other early Islamic cities such as Wāsiṭ,
Fusṭāṭ, Kūfa, and Basra and their continued success depended upon this
particular body of consumers and vendors.
Infrastructure to support commerce and communications became
necessary within and between these new cities and towns. Under both the
Umayyad and Abbāsid governments, a major ministry, the Department of
Posts and Intelligence (Diwan al-Barid), managed the road networks of the
early empire.28 The department used the network to transmit orders and
other information between the central government, provincial capitals, and
district towns. An improved road network offered greater security and
predictability, which encouraged trade, especially in luxury items, to meet
the growing demands of Muslim elites. The road network facilitated the
transport of construction materials – a necessity for the establishment of
28 Walmsley (2000), 300
20
towns and infrastructure. However, minimal archaeological and epigraphic
research has been conducted on the structure and role of road networks in
Umayyad and ‘Abbāsid times.
The story of early Islamic urban development makes clear that intense
state intervention and resources were required to establish new cities,
modify existing structures, and enhance the networks which connected those
nodes. The enormity of these projects made acquiring steady revenue a
necessity. The awareness of this need by Umayyad Caliphs may be indicated
by the extensive administrative and fiscal reforms that enhanced the state’s
ability to extract and redirect resources within the empire.
Imperial Consolidation and Administrative Reforms
In order to understand the tax administrative changes which occurred
after the mid-seventh century conquests, the pre-conquest Byzantine
methods of administration must be examined. Under the Byzantine Empire,
the central administration assigned each province a particular sum of tribute
to be extracted. One governor headed each province of the empire. Five
eparchies, headed by duces (sing. dux), divided the province of Egypt.
Beginning under the earlier Roman Empire, the dux held the highest military
office, equivalent to that of a general, within the province, and oversaw
military matters. Within the eparchies existed around sixty pagarchies, each
21
under the administration of a pagarch. This official’s primary task was to
impose and collect taxes at the district level.29
Pagarchs in Egypt were predominantly Coptic-speaking aristocrats who
were not appointed by the government, but achieved local power based on
their status as prominent landowners. A later pagarch, Flavius Papas of
Apollōnos Anō, was a member of this land-owning aristocracy, which
dominated the middle and upper ranks of the Egyptian ruling class in the
decades following the conquests.30 Under the authority of the pagarchs,
village headmen administered villages, each of which were collectively
responsible for payment of taxes assigned to the community by the pagarch.
The pagarch evaluated individuals based on their ability to pay, their
assumed wealth or possessions, and the productivity of the land (if any) held
by each individual. Governors depended upon local officials and notables to
apportion each districts tax assessment among the local population. In
addition, the same officials who apportioned a district’s tax quota also
collected the taxes owed.31
Immediately following the early conquests, the Caliphate left many
aspects of local and provincial administrative functions unchanged. Indeed,
according to Petra M. Sijpesteijn, in Egypt, “taxes were assigned and collected
29 Petra M. Sijpesteijn, “Landholding Patterns in Early Islamic Egypt,” in Journal of Agrarian Change 9:1 (2009), 121 30 Clive Foss, “Egypt Under Muawiya Part 1: Flavius Papas and Upper Egypt,” in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 72:1 (2009), 5 31 Gladys Frantz-Murphy, ”First Five Centuries of Muslim Rule”, in Agriculture in Egypt: From Pharaonic to Modern Times, edited by Alan K. Bowman and Eugene Rogan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 244
22
according to the pre-Islamic, Byzantine system by the same Christian
Egyptian officials who had done so in the preceding years.”32 Local Coptic-
speaking native officials continued to assign and collect taxes as they had
done before the conquest, while newly appointed Muslim Arab officials filled
only the highest positions of the Egyptian administration.33 These included
the positions of governor (amīr), head of police (ṣāḥib al-shurṭa), chief judge
(qāḍī), and treasurer.
An imperial power often depends upon a small ruling entity to oversee a
vast territory. This was true in Egypt, where the post-conquest Arab
population was too small to effectively oversee local administration. As a
result, the five eparchies remained. Their duces, however, lost their military
functions after the breakdown of Byzantine military power in Egypt.
Therefore, the caliphate’s new administration acquired the powers lost by
Byzantine administrators.
Having allowed local Christian elites to retain their administrative
positions within Egyptian society, the new Islamic rulers nevertheless
exercised strict and direct supervision over the administration from top to
bottom.34 Papyri evidence reveals an increase in administrative documents
written in Greek and Arabic. One of the earliest dated Arabic papyri from
22/643 CE, for example, recorded the end of a tax-demand note, marking the
32 Sijpesteijn (2009), 121 33 A. Ben Shemesh, “Abū Yūsuf’s Kitāb al-Kharāj,” in Taxation in Islam III (Leiden: Brill, 1969), 7 34 Sijpesteijn (2009), 122
23
early stages of the long-term process of Arabization of the Islamic Empire’s
new province. Greek papyri also recorded the raising of levies by Arab
officers for military units traveling through the Egyptian countryside, and
some Greek papyri note that Arabs (“Saracens”) delivered tax-demand notes,
collected levies, and enacted special administrative missions for the
governor.35 In sum, these examples reflect the use of a central recording
system, and the involvement of designated Arab army officers in regular tax
collection.
While documentary papyri reveal the movements of Arab soldiers and
officials throughout rural Egypt, little evidence appears to suggest any
permanent Arab settlements in Egypt prior to the eighth century, beyond the
establishment of Fusṭāṭ in 691 CE. Caliph ‘Umar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 634-44)
allegedly instructed Muslims to settle in garrison cities (pl. amṣār, sing. miṣr),
instead of acquiring land and settling among conquered populations.36
Further, Muslim Arab male society at the time was wholly militarized, ready
to continue the conquests to bring the rest of the world under Islamic rule. If
Muslim army leaders received land, it was intended for construction of
housing for themselves and their families, and not usable for agriculture.
The early Muslim Arab inhabitants of Egypt thus did not settle in existing
urban spaces, but in new towns along the desert’s edge, such as Fusṭāṭ, as
illustrated above. According to papyri evidence, this settlement pattern
35 Sijpesteijn (2009), 122 36 Hugh Kennedy. The Armies of the Caliphs: Military and Society in the Early Islamic State (London: Routledge, 2001), 7
24
meant that land held by existing Egyptian elites would not be confiscated.37
Moreover, until the eighth century, no Arab names appear in lists of
agricultural tax-payers or landholders, and no Arab-named cultivators or
landowners are mentioned in Greek or Coptic land leases.
37 Sijpesteijn (2009), 123
25
Empire | Umayyad Consolidation and Reform
Centralization: Umayyad Administrative Reforms
The ability to regularly levy taxes is essential if the state is to maintain a
steady stream of revenue. Under the Umayyad Caliphate, the empire
continued to expand east toward Central Asia and west into North Africa and
the Iberian Peninsula. This expansion depended upon the cooperation of
soldiers, who conquered, suppressed rebellions, and facilitated tax and
tribute extraction. During his reign, Caliph ‘Umar I (r. 634-644) established
the dīwān (central register) for ease of tax collection and payment of aṭā
(salary) to soldiers, and in Egypt, the conquering general and first governor,
‘Amr b. al-‘As, allegedly set up the provincial dīwān.38 According to Chase
Robinson, registry in the dīwān entitled one to annual pay, conventionally
distributed in gold or silver coins.39 Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (r. 685-705)
ordered that the dīwāns be kept in Arabic instead of Greek. This ensured that
only Arabic-speakers could function as administrative officials, thus
eliminating natives who had not learned Arabic.
The army underwent a period of professionalization during the reign of
‘Abd al-Malik, with the replacement of tribal chieftains with salaried
commanders. Under this system, Arab Muslims could acquire wealth and
status through their military accomplishments. Soldiers provided the
38 Sijpesteijn, “The Archival Mind in Early Islamic Egypt: Two Arabic Papyri,” in From al-Andalus to Khurasan: Documents from the Medieval Muslim World (Leiden: Brill, 2007),165 39 Chase F. Robinson, ‘Abd al-Malik (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2005), 68
26
coercion necessary to extract taxes and tribute for the empire, and were paid
using tax revenue.40 Unfortunately, numerical data for expenditures of the
early empire is scarce. However, narratives provide some examples for the
empire’s use of resources. Construction of the garrison city of Wasit
reportedly consumed five years of Iraq’s land tax revenues (forty million
dirhams), and ‘Abd al-Malik’s construction of the “Jerusalem mosque”
consumed seven years of Egypt’s tax revenues.41 Further, much of the
taxation in the early Islamic Empire originated from the need to maintain the
growing demands of the army. Thus, territorial expansion of the empire and
the growing central dīwāns made necessary the fiscal and administrative
reforms of the late seventh and early eighth centuries.
Papyri evidence from Nessana, located in Palestine, dated to the mid- to
late-seventh century, documents irregular tribute-taking in the early Islamic
Empire.42 According to Robinson (2005), parallel documentation has been
found in Egypt, which suggests that such irregularities had also been present
in Egypt at the time. The caliphates of ‘Abd al-Malik and his son, al-Walīd (r.
705-715) began empire-wide reforms to enhance the centralization of the
empire. Under ‘Abd al-Malik, a comprehensive census was carried out during
691-92, in which each man had to register his name, lineage, crops,
possessions, children, and everything else he owned.43 This census also
40 Robinson (2005), 66 41 Robinson (2005), 76; Kennedy (2010), 54 42 Robinson (2005), 71 43Wadād Al-Qāḍī, “Population Census and Land Surveys under the Umayyads (41-132/661-750),” in Der Islam: Zeitschrift fur Geschichte und Kultur des Islamischen Orients (2006), 366
27
marks one of the first census surveys to be accompanied by a cadastral
survey, both of which were “compulsory, comprehensive, organized, and
meticulously recorded.”44
‘Abd al-Malik’s brother, the Egyptian governor ‘Abd al-Azīz, as well as his
successor ‘Abd Allāh b. ‘Abd al-Malik, enacted similar comprehensive fiscal
reforms. Such reforms included land surveys, livestock inventories, censuses,
safe conducts and neck-sealing, forced land assignments of uncultivated
lands, and development projects.45 ‘Abd al-Azīz ordered a census of the
monks of Egypt in 74/693-94, in which the monks were counted and a poll
tax of one dīnār was imposed on each monk, the first time poll tax had been
collected from this demographic.46 Pagarchs and duces, increasingly Muslim
rather than Christian, maintained closer supervision of taxpayers, including
their locations and possessions. Each aspect of these reforms was intended to
enhance the rural acreage and fiscal productivity of the Egyptian province.
‘Abd al-Malik also introduced coin reforms beginning around 692. Pre-
Islamic regional mint variations reflected a more decentralized system, while
‘Abd al-Malik’s reform coins reflect an effort to centralize the administration.
Prior to these reforms, silver was predominantly used in the east, and gold in
the west. ‘Abd al-Malik’s reforms merged these two monetary zones,
creating a uniform mode of currency. During the first phase of coin reform,
mints featured a continuation of figurative imagery, but introduced Islamic
44 Al-Qāḍī (2006), 367 45 Sijpesteijn (2009), 126 46 Al-Qāḍī (2006), 381
28
designs and motifs, such as illustrations a caliph holding a sword or a
governor in prayer.47 The next phase of reform coins feature the exclusive
use of Arabic and epigraphic, or non-figural designs. Establishment of a
uniform coin provided more ease for the empire to distribute pay to soldiers,
and reflected an attempt further centralize the empire. By implementing such
changes, the empire’s administration could more easily extract resources
from its periphery to sustain its continued expansion.
Two themes emerge from the tax reforms which began during ‘Abd al-
Malik’s reign: an extension and increase of tax liabilities and a rise in
coercion and efficiency. Individuals who had previously been exempt from
paying taxes, including monks, priests, and bishops, became liable for tax
burdens.48 Muslims and non-Muslims were placed in different fiscal
categories, and therefore paid different taxes at different rates. Muslims who
owned agricultural properties paid a tax which amounted to approximately
one-tenth of the produce of the land, while non-Muslims paid a head tax
(jizya) and land tax (kharāj), calculated either on the basis of produce or the
area of cultivation.49
Centralization in the Sources: Letters and Legal Documents
The increase in Muslim-Arab presence in the local administration is
illustrated by eighth-century Coptic letters and legal documents mentioning
47 Robinson (2005), 73 48 Robinson (2005), 75 49 Sijpesteijn (2007), 167
29
or written by Arab-named individuals, tax demand notes issued in the names
of Muslim pagarchs, and the rise of bilingual documents, written in Arabic
and Greek, in administrative communication.50 The first known
documentation of a Muslim tax collector appeared in the late seventh
century, when a Muslim named Sulaymān collected a tax payment and
countersigned a receipt, affirming this acquisition.51 We can speculate from
such an example that tax collection involved direct interaction with
individual Egyptian taxpayers, interaction that signaled a greater
involvement by Muslim officials in rural Egypt.
Letters preserved in the archives of a pagarch of Aphrodito named
Basilios illustrate the typical response of governors, specifically Qurra b.
Šarīk (in office 698-722), to foot-dragging and other small-scale acts of tax
resistance.52 The archive of Basilios contains letters of correspondence from
the governor to Basilios, which include demand-notes for taxes, labor, and
other resources. A letter from the year 710 (P. Lond. No. 1349) contains an
order by the governor to Basilios to begin the collection of the public gold
taxes for the previous year and to forward revenues to the Treasury. The
governor notes that the peasants of Aphrodito had finished sowing their
wheat crop and thus could carry out their taxpaying responsibilities.53
50 Sijpesteijn (2009), 128 51 Gonis (2001), 228 52 Bell, H.I. “Two Official Letters of the Arab Period,” in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 12:3/4 (1926) 53 Morimoto (1981), 109
30
Morimoto (1981) emphasizes that this letter was not an order for taxes
for the current year, but for the previous year’s harvest, revealing that the
pagarch had not sent taxes to the Treasury on schedule. Another letter (P.
Lond. 1393), also dated to 710, Qurra b. Šarīk requested from Aphrodito
sailors and skilled workmen, as well as provisions for the laborers and
resources for the military.54 The governor’s treatment of Basilios likely
reflects remarkable distrust of local officials by Muslim administrators,
because Qurra b. Šarīk provides Basilios with specific orders to treat his men
fairly, and to collect the provisions carefully and urgently. In his letter, the
governor advises:
“Therefore let there be no negligence and no deficiency; for you will know that if anything be in arrear we shall by God’s command exact it from you in double measure for your neglect and contumacy. Knowing therefore that the matter of the said raid is one of urgency perform it without delay, not affording us any cause of complaint whatever against you.”55
The governor’s reminder, in the form of a threat, allows us to speculate
that delays, inaccuracies, and foot-dragging behaviors of pagarchs and other
local officials may have occurred with great frequency. Thus, governors like
Qurra b. Šarīk had learned to exert a certain amount of force to ensure that
pagarchs followed orders promptly and accurately. In addition, this reveals
what may have necessitated the more direct involvement of the tax-
collecting administration with local populations. Delays and foot-dragging
posed a threat to the maintenance of the state.
54 Bell (1926), 275 55 Bell (1926), 279
31
Indeed, census-surveys initiated during the reign of ‘Abd al-Malik
reinforced the necessity of these reforms. In 706, the head administrator of
the Thebaid eparchy sent a letter to his pagarchs, ordering them to draw up
lists of “fugitives and strangers,” to levy fines of three solidi from each
stranger, and forward the fines to the treasury.56 First, Wadād al-Qāḍi
suggests that this document indicates that census surveys were undertaken
by actors within local administrations, rather than by the central
government. This supports the high level of dependence of the central
administration on local officials.
Second, the problem of “fugitives and strangers” is interesting: evidently,
tax evasion was enough of a dilemma in early eighth-century Egypt to
warrant official orders to seek them out. The fugitives, Qāḍi continues,
remained “a thorn in the side” of the Muslim administration throughout the
empire for a long time.57 The deceased also posed a problem for tax
collection: Qāḍi references Pseudo-Severus’ account that ‘Abd al-Malik gave
orders that “no dead man should be buried until [someone] had paid the poll
tax for him.”58 Two documents described by Morimoto (1981), P. Lond. 1460
and 1461, represent two lists of fugitives which had been produced in
response to these demands.59 P. Lond. 1460 records the names, present
locations, pagarchies of origin of tax fugitives, and the duration of time
56 Qāḍi, “Population Census and Land Surveys under the Umayyads (41-132/661-750),” Der Islam: Zeitschrift fur Geschichte und Kultur des Islamischen Orients (2006), 389 57 Qāḍi (2006), 390 58 Qāḍi (2006), 390 59 Morimoto (1981), 121
32
fugitives had spent at large. 1461 contains a list of fugitives who had fled to
other pagarchies from Aphrodito. One particular letter from Qurra b. Šarīk in
October 709 contained an order for Basilios to register all people in his
jurisdiction and send him that register accompanied by a list of tax
fugitives.60 Two months later, Qurra sent the pagarch instructions to compile
registers for the fugitives and have them forcibly returned to their place of
origin. The governor requested the following information: names of fugitives,
their time spent in Aphrodito, amount of property they owned, and the
names of those allowed to remain in the pagarchy. Some persons
documented in these lists had gone unregistered for twenty or more years.
Fugitives who were permitted to remain where they settled were registered
and assessed as tax-payer.
Under a previous governor, a guarantee-declaration (P. Lond. 1518)
dated to 708 documents six fugitive families. In this declaration, three village
officials acknowledge the receipt of these families and vow to keep charge of
them until the officials receive further orders from authorities. The names of
twenty-two members of the six families are recorded in this document.61
Qurra also ordered punishments for pagarchs if new fugitives not included in
such lists appeared after lists had been collected. Wickham (2005) explains
that in at least a dozen letters, Qurra chided Basilios for his delays, and in one
letter, the governor warned Basilios: he was to send wood right away, or face
60 Morimoto (1981), 123 61 Morimoto (1981), 122
33
“a recompense intended to destroy [his] life.”62 Basilios was told that further
non-compliance would be harshly punished.
The frustration and threats present in Qurra b. Šarīk’s demands for tax
fugitives suggests the prevalence of tax evasion as a means for peasants to
circumvent rigorous tax policies and the incredible threat that tax evasion by
flight posed to the imperial tax system. Indeed, Morimoto (1981) suggests,
“[t]hus it would seem that the fugitives lived for long periods among the local
villagers and were protected by them, and that the local authorities connived
at this.” 63 Many tax fugitives had established themselves and started families
in their new villages.
That a number individuals had remained unregistered for twenty or more
years suggests that tax flight was a common practice, and a major problem
for the administration. The increase in registration and resettlement of tax
fugitives during this period encountered non-cooperation from village
authorities and local peasants, as local authorities further engaged in foot-
dragging measures and general non-compliance. ‘Usāma b. Zayd, appointed
financial director in 714, demanded that “if a fugitive or one that had not
been marked as a monk was discovered, the governor ordered that one of his
limbs should be cut off.”64 This threatened the ability of local communities to
protect fugitives and ensure their personal safety. Short of cutting off limbs,
62 Chris Wickham. Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 135 63 Wickham (2005), 135 64 Wickham (2005), 124
34
the increased use of passports to document populations and their
whereabouts was another means of identifying fugitives who lacked a
passport, which restricted the movement of people. Thus, peasants lost the
ability to circumvent taxes via migration.
Later Umayyad caliphs continued to undertake comprehensive tax
reforms throughout the early eighth century. By this time, many Muslims had
evidently left Fusṭāṭ to engage in agriculture, and a small number of
Egyptians had converted to Islam. As a result, the process of
institutionalizing Islam, while it proved fruitful for the establishment of a
common identity within the empire, contributed to an eroded tax base.
Muslims increasingly became involved in agricultural production, but did not
pay land taxes. Similarly, Egyptian converts to Islam could avoid religiously-
defined taxes.
As a response to this situation, Caliph ‘Umar II (r. 717-720) introduced
tax reforms based on the territorial, rather than individual, principle. Under
the territorial principle, ‘Umar II established that the kharāj (land) tax must
be considered as a tax attached to the land itself, and to be paid by its owners
independently of their religion.65 In addition, ‘Umar discontinued the
practice of exemption from the poll tax through conversion: if an Egyptian
converted to Islam, the individual would give up his or her land. This ensured
that Christian Egyptians would remain subject to both the land and poll
taxes. Caliph Hišām (r. 723-743) contemplated the creation of an empire-
65 Shemesh (1969), 8; Sijpesteijn (2007), 168
35
wide, unified tax structure, and appointed ‘Ubayd Allāh b. al-Ḥabḥāb (in
office 724-734) as financial director, charging him with the task to
reorganize the empire’s fiscal procedures. ‘Ubayd Allāh launched an
extensive investigation of Egypt’s finances, and in doing so, he conducted a
census surveys of male adults and livestock, as well as cadastral surveys. Al-
Maqrīzī recounted that he had assisted in conducting this survey, in which
thirty million faddāns were registered.66
‘Ubayd Allāh intended to use his reforms to strengthen the empire’s
ability to collect the poll tax from subjugated populations. In the census
surveys, all males in the province aged twenty to one-hundred were allegedly
counted and tagged with lead badges. This act of tagging men with lead
badges falls under the term neck-sealing, the practice of requiring non-
Muslims to wear leaden seals stamped with their assigned jizya (poll) tax
rates. Neck-sealing both identified and stigmatized non-Muslims in the early
Islamic Empire. In pre-Islamic tradition, the acts of sealing, branding, and
otherwise marking individuals signified their status as defeated enemies,
captives, or slaves.67 Thus, early defeated populations were symbolically
denoted as captives in Muslim eyes.
Here, the caliphate appears to have made use of an existing tradition.
However, while sealing and branding were certainly practiced in pre-Islamic
traditions, the practice of neck-sealing for the purpose of levying taxes on
66 Morimoto (1981), 135 67 Robinson, “Neck-Sealing in Early Islam,” in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 48:3 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 407
36
subject populations was unprecedented in southwest Asia.68 Further, Kosei
Morimoto explains, ‘Ubayd Allāh ordered the Christians of Egypt to be
branded on the hand with the image of a lion. 69 ‘Ubayd Allāh next ordered
the issuing of passports and placement of milestones and boundary markers
on roads. As a result of the investigation, ‘Ubayd Allāh concluded that Egypt
could afford heavier taxes, and after reporting back to Caliph Hišām, he
raised the tax quotas of the province. These reforms made it easier to
document the whereabouts of imperial subjects, and facilitated resource
extraction in the province to support an ever-growing – and ever-demanding
– empire.
Reforms and Restructuring
The early medieval period can be seen as one in which a new world
system emerged from the disintegrated ancient world system. This new
system was still organized along imperial lines, as it had been during
antiquity, and covered a similar geographic span. I consider Pirenne to have
been right in that this period experienced a dramatic change in the direction
of trade and communication networks. However, I disagree with his
suggestion that the rise of the Islamic Empire brought forth the
disintegration of anything.
68 Robinson, “Neck-Sealing” (2005), 405 69 Morimoto (1981), 135
37
In fact, based on the evidence of urban development and the widespread
administrative and fiscal reforms under the early Islamic Empire, I am
inclined to argue that this period was one of innovation, reorganization, and
re-centering. Early Islamic administrators recycled old structures and
created new ones. From old institutions, new connections were forged. A
unified fiscal system facilitated safer transit overland, while maritime
voyages increased in frequency despite each voyage covering shorter
distances.
Of course, this was a dynamic system in which internal connections were
still vulnerable to decay and restructuring, which facilitated internal crises
such as civil wars, revolts, and revolution. Not only did this system remain
vulnerable, but the effects of the expansion and consolidation of the early
Islamic Empire on the Mediterranean and other peripheries varied by
geography. Overall, new connections, travel routes, and trade networks
became re-focused around the emerging Islamic Empire as a formidable
economic and political power in the medieval Mediterranean world.
38
Impact | The Early Islamic Empire and the Mediterranean
How Pirenne’s Islamic Empire Transformed the Mediterranean Sea
Pirenne argued that the expansion of the Islamic Empire rapidly
transformed the Mediterranean Sea into a Muslim-controlled lake. This
transformation, he suggested, resulted in the shrinkage of cities and ports,
the disappearance of Mediterranean commerce, and ultimately the end of the
ancient economy. In order to trace the origins of medieval Europe to this
isolation and decline, Pirenne largely relied on documentary sources to
support his description of the early medieval world, especially Gregory of
Tours’ History of the Franks, along with various saints’ lives, miscellaneous
letters, and legislative documents.
First, Pirenne claimed that the Germanic invasions of the fourth and fifth
centuries did not significantly affect Roman cultural influence or the
commercial unity of the Mediterranean. Land ownership and labor remained
unchanged, while the Roman style of commerce persisted: the Germans,
Pirenne continued, primarily assimilated with Romans and maintained
Roman tax administration structures and political institutions. Pirenne
described the period after the Germanic invasions as one of general cultural
continuity, and measured this continuity in terms of coined money and its
circulation, land ownership and labor, and the condition of cities and
commerce.
39
Second, Pirenne suggested that the rapid and unexpected advance of the
Islamic Empire in the seventh century broke this tradition of ancient unity.
How Pirenne perceived the influence of the Islamic Empire on Mediterranean
commerce is evident in the section titled “The Closing of the Western
Mediterranean.” In Pirenne’s medieval world, the Islamic conquests
separated the eastern Mediterranean from the west and caused the
Mediterranean Sea to no longer support commerce.
While Pirenne conceded that commerce did not disappear entirely, he
argued that long-distance trade disappeared and that the flow of trade
networks led away from the Western Mediterranean. Instead, economic
movement flowed primarily towards Baghdad, the imperial center of the
emerging Islamic Empire. Pirenne insisted that this change doomed
Mediterranean maritime commerce.70 Pirenne lamented: “The ports and
cities were deserted. The link with the Orient was severed, and there was no
communication with the Saracen coasts. There was nothing but death.”71
The Islamic Empire redirected commercial activity to new trade routes,
including routes between the Caspian Sea and the Baltic region. Pirenne
argued that routes which had previously connected the east and west zones
of the Mediterranean were no longer usable; as Pirenne concludes, “from the
middle of the seventh century navigation between the [Muslim] ports of the
Aegean Sea and those ports which had remained Christian had become
70 Pirenne (1936), 2 71 Pirenne (1939), 184
40
impossible…”72 Pirenne did speculate that it may have been possible to
maintain navigation between the Byzantine Empire, Greece, and Italy, but
dismissed the possibility that the Byzantine vessels would have sailed any
farther due to attacks led by the Islamic conquerors on Sicily.
Further, Pirenne noted, the continual ravaging of North Africa from 643
to 708 put an end to any commercial activities in the region. Pirenne
immediately dismissed any assumption that agents from the Islamic Empire
“could have taken the place of the former merchants of the Byzantine Levant
… They had no notion of trading, but only of pillaging.”73 In Pirenne’s
medieval world, there was no possibility for the Mediterranean to retain its
cultural legacy of prosperous long-distance trade under the domination of
the Islamic Empire.
Pirenne measured the extent of the medieval economy by the absence or
presence in documentary sources of mentions of the sale or transportation of
spices and papyrus, or the movement of people, especially merchants.
Papyrus was the first item to disappear in documentary evidence, in the mid-
to-late seventh century. After 716, mentions of spices, like that of papyrus,
also disappear from the surviving texts. Likewise, wine from Gaza
disappeared, oil was no longer exported from Africa, and gold became
increasingly rare. Pirenne concluded that his sources provided no evidence
for the continued existence in Mediterranean cities of merchant colonies or
72 Pirenne (1939), 165 73 Pirenne (1939), 174
41
the presence of professional merchants in the European interior. From this
disappearance of people, papyrus, and spices from the texts, Pirenne
concluded that these materials were simply not present in early medieval
society.
In the case of spices and herbs, Pirenne assumed that medieval
consumers of spices would use them in the same manner as ancient
consumers, but the possibility arises that the uses of spices changed during
this transition into the medieval period. In Out of the East: Spices and the
Medieval Imagination (2009), Paul Freedman highlights the medicinal, ritual,
and cosmetic uses of spices in medieval Europe. During the medieval period,
Freedman argues, spices were in high demand, and the supply often changed
based on price, warfare, and changes in trade routes. The fierce demand for
spices, Freedman continues, was caused by “needs beyond simply
gastronomic preferences.”74 Overall, Freedman’s adventure in the medieval
spice trade reveals the many uses of spices (botanical and non-botanical
alike) in medieval Europe and beyond.
Freedman relies largely on a handbook compiled by fourteenth-century
Florentine merchant Francesco Balducci Pegolotti: the Pratica della
mercatura. Many spices and drugs Pegolotti describes in his handbook were
imported from the Islamic World and beyond: balsam, for example, was a
plant resin native to Arabia known for its healing properties and spiritual
74 Paul Freedman, “Spices: A Global Commodity,” in Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press 2009), 1-18
42
powers. Frankincense, too, has long been well-known for its prominent use
in Christian and Orthodox Church rituals. Dragon’s blood, a bright red resin
extracted from the plant genus Dracaena, was used as a medicine and red
dye. Non-botanical spices and drugs also appear in Pegolotti’s handbook. The
panacea “tutty,” for example, consisted of the charred scrapings from
chimneys and was imported from Alexandria.75 “Momie” or “mumia” –
produced from specially embalmed human remains – was imported from
Egypt and other Eastern regions. This product was thought to stop bleeding.
Another imported medicinal product, ambergris, was produced by sperm
whales in the Indian Ocean. Whales coughed up this material, which could be
harvested when it washed up on the shores, usually near East Africa. This
material was believed to combat epileptic seizures and was used as a
hygienic perfume.
What do these various uses for spices and similar commodities mean for
Henri Pirenne and his vision of how the Islamic Empire transformed the
Mediterranean world? First, Pirenne’s search for the presence of material
goods in surviving texts did not take into account how changes in tastes and
uses for material goods alters demand, production, and exchange. Second,
the presence or absence of material goods in text sources reveals little about
how goods were produced, transported, and exchanged. This in part arises
from the problem of documents as evidence: what is preserved in these
sources depends on what the writer found to be important, and whether or
75 Freedman (2009), 13-14
43
not a written document was preserved. However, the presence of and
demand for high unit cost items from Asia and Africa in medieval Europe –
specifically, spices and drugs – reveals that some network had been created
to harvest these materials, transport these products over long distances, and
exchange them for money, material goods, or other forms of repayment.
Mediterranean (dis)Unity: Rome, Carthage, and Luni
In Mohammed, Charlemagne, and the Origins of Europe (1983), Richard
Hodges and David Whitehouse use recent archaeological data to review
either the continuity or discontinuation of “Mediterranean unity of the
ancient world, [or] what may be regarded as the truly essential features of
the Roman culture as it still existed in the fifth century,” and to question
whether long-distance trade endured through the sixth century as it had in
Roman times.76 Their conclusions challenge Pirenne’s argument that the
seventh-century expansion of the Islamic Empire into the Mediterranean
brought on irreversible economic and cultural decline. The Germanic
invasions, Hodges and Whitehouse conclude, had more significant effects on
Western Europe’s economy, political structures, and material culture than
Pirenne had suggested
To compensate for the “deficiency” of early medieval documentary
sources, which do not provide an account of the volume of trade, Hodges and
Whitehouse compare data from three archaeological sites in particular – in
76 Hodges and Whitehouse (1983), 20
44
Rome, Carthage, and Luni – and arrive at the conclusion that the post-Roman
period witnessed a significant decline in material and economic conditions.77
The three sites reveal the persistence of commercial life, but on a diminished
scale, within the Mediterranean and northwest Europe until the sixth
century. Though the authors agree that this evidence confirmed Pirenne’s
belief that Alaric’s assault on Rome in 410 C.E. was one incident in a long and
complex process, Hodges and Whitehouse suggest that there was no
coherently Roman cultural and economic unity in the Mediterranean by the
sixth century.
Instead, Hodges and Whitehouse argue that urban and rural excavations
suggest that the “final degradation of Rome” occurred in the sixth century
and, that “Islam conquered an already decaying [civilization].”78 Therefore,
they suggest, the expansion of the Islamic Empire in the seventh century was
a symptom, rather than the cause, of the deep-rooted social and economic
decline of the Roman world. The excavations at Rome and Carthage can be
compared to create a chronology of decline in the post-Roman
Mediterranean world. This “decline” is indicated by the decrease in objects
such as amphorae, transported on long-distance maritime voyages across the
Mediterranean. In addition, “decline” can incorporate a form of urban decay,
in which the standard of housing, population, and maintenance of
infrastructure declined.
77 Hodges and Whitehouse (1983), 52 78 Hodges and Whitehouse (1983), 76
45
The excavations in Rome uncovered a significant amount of fragmented,
broken amphorae from North Africa, western Turkey, and Syria in the fill of
the Schola Praeconum. This discovery indicated the presence of large-scale
seaborne trade between Rome, North Africa, and the eastern Mediterranean
between the years 430 and 440 C.E.79 These dates were derived from thirty-
eight legible coins also found among the fragments. Further, according to
archaeologists M.J. Fulford and John Riley, massive, UNESCO-sponsored
excavations in Carthage suggested that in the late fifth and early sixth
centuries, the city of Carthage enjoyed a buoyant economy.
This impression was confirmed by large numbers of African Red Slip
ceramic wares found in the excavation, and the wide circulation of Vandal
coinage from Carthage in the Mediterranean. Fulford suggested that once the
province was released from its obligation to Rome, Carthage could sustain a
lively trading relationship with other parts of the Mediterranean, its surplus
no longer exported as taxes or invested in monumental buildings for the
Roman state. With Justinian’s reconquest in the early sixth century, however,
commerce diminished, and wheat previously sold to fund the purchase of
private luxuries was requisitioned to meet state needs.
Burial sites discovered in the Carthage excavations further illustrate
sixth-century decline. A typical Roman burial site consisted of a necropolis,
or city of the dead, located outside the city walls. In Carthage, comparatively
well-preserved mud brick buildings dating from the late sixth or early
79 Hodges and Whitehouse (1983), 24-28
46
seventh century were discovered. After their abandonment, this collection of
buildings appears to have been used as a burial ground. Similar burial sites
have been found throughout the former urban areas of Carthage. Hodges and
Whitehouse suggest that the presence of a burial ground within city walls
reveals the abandonment of substantial areas in a city, in combination with a
simultaneous decline in both population and regulation of burial site
proximity to human settlement. This phenomenon might, however, also be
explained by cultural change, such as Christianization of Italy and the
development of new attitudes toward the dead.
The excavations from Luni also revealed a continued decline in pan-
Roman economic unity and deterioration of the commercial networks
through which this city acquired luxury objects. Until around 400 C.E., the
city derived wealth from marble exports and functioned as a trading post for
amphorae from the Eastern Mediterranean and glass from Syria. After the
marble trade collapsed, Luni was “barely” operating as a port when the
Lombards conquered the city in 640.80 Evidently, the long-distance trade
routes that had connected Luni to other trade centers prior to 400 had
largely disappeared by 640.
If other ports and trading towns throughout the region experienced a
similar decline in long-distance trade, this would negate Pirenne’s
assumption that long-distance trade carried on as usual throughout the sixth
century. In addition, the excavations in Luni revealed a shift in the style of
80 Hodges and Whitehouse (1983), 30-32
47
residential dwellings. The Luni excavations uncovered the post-classical
remains of wooden structures, most likely dwellings, dated to the fifth
through ninth centuries. The reports from these excavations indicated that
the dwellings resembled the homes of West Germanic peoples. This evidence
suggests a possible demographic shift in the inhabitants of Luni or at least
those who constructed these dwellings.
Hodges and Whitehouse hypothesize that intensive long-distance trade
and the market economy collapsed by the sixth century the post-Roman
Mediterranean. The authors recognize the limitations of studying the
archaeological evidence of small sites in only three Mediterranean towns,
and thus test their hypothesis by studyin a contemporary rural settlement in
Italy. The authors use this study to test whether major and economic and
social change at a local scale could be seen at a regional scale. In order to date
late Roman farms and villas, Hodges and Whitehouse use pottery, specifically
Red Slip wares of North Africa.
Based on archaeological evidence from South Etruria and the city of
Rome, the authors conclude that the size of towns and standard of urban
housing declined as the Byzantines levied heavy taxes to pay for the army
and central government during a period of “almost continuous warfare”;
agricultural and industrial production declined, and social unrest, mass
movements, and plague depopulated the countryside.81 The final
“degradation” of Rome, for Hodges and Whitehouse, occurred in the sixth
81 Hodges and Whitehouse (1983), 52
48
century. The instability of the countryside, Hodges and Whitehouse
explained, provided an opportunity for kings and chiefs from north of the
Alps to establish their own social and economic systems in the
Mediterranean. The authors concluded that Pirenne’s argument was not
borne out by their own evidence, and that cultural and economic
destabilization in the Mediterranean occurred prior to the seventh-century
Islamic conquests.
Evidence of Constraint: Byzantium, Fifth to Eighth Centuries
Similar patterns of destabilization formed in Byzantium after the fifth
century. In Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era c. 680-850: A History (2011),
Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon outlined patterns of change that occurred
in Byzantium. I found in their study many samples of evidence for responses
to constraints on the Byzantine Empire before and during this period.
Archaeological studies in Byzantium have revealed patterns of change in
ceramics productions and building construction. Additionally, numismatic
evidence has revealed further responses to constraint. In The Age of Justinian:
The Circumstances of Imperial Power (1996), J.A.S. Evans highlights the
written evidence for imperial building projects enacted to combat the
constraints of Justinian’s empire.
Byzantium, Evans remarks, “was a beleaguered empire with permeable
frontiers,” and Justinian’s imperial diplomacy mission was to secure
49
Byzantine frontiers, spread Christianity, and recover lost provinces.82 The
security of Justinian’s empire was threatened by groups such as the Huns,
Bulgars, Vandals, Slavs, Berbers, and Persians. In the early years of his reign,
Justinian was full of reforming zeal, taxing heavily and spending prodigiously.
After the 530s, Justinian refocused his efforts to increase the efficiency of the
administration while reducing its size. Justinian also initiated a new imperial
building program, in which he directed the restoration of churches and cities,
as well as the construction of churches, defensive fortifications, and
mechanisms for water supply and flood control.
Historical sources make it clear that security mattered. Procopius’ Of the
Buildings of Justinian describes the construction of many structures under
Justinian’s program. In North Africa alone, Procopius mentions the
construction of thirty-five forts and five churches.83 The striking number of
forts compared to churches emphasizes Justinian’s focus on frontier security.
In the East, Justinian directed his focus toward the regions of Syria and
Palestine: his fortifications were concentrated in the north to protect the
road to Antioch and the passes through the Amanus and Taurus mountain
ranges. In central and southern Syria, Evans explains, Justinian’s imperial
defense strategy relied on alliances with local Ghassanid populations, who
would fight alongside the Byzantine military against the Sassanid Persians.
82 J.A.S. Evans, The Age of Justinian: The Circumstances of Imperial Power (London: Routledge, 1996), 78 83 Evans, 216
50
Along the northeastern frontier, Justinian dispatched military general
Belisarius to build an advance post on the very edge of Persian territory and
to reconstruct the frontier defenses.84 Dara, a fortress initially built by
Emperor Anastasius and located about thirty kilometers from Nisibis in
modern Turkey, was refortified under Justinian’s reign. In addition,
Justinian’s engineers initiated a program of canalization in Dara, which was
traversed by the river Cordes (modern Daraçay). Martyropolis, located in
Armenia, was strengthened with a ditch and a second wall. The walls of
Sergiopolis (modern Resafa) in Syria were also refortified. In the Balkans, a
broad band of small garrison posts and fortified settlements were
constructed, and “barbarian allies” were secured. 85
In Mohammed, Charlemagne, and the Origins of Europe, Hodges and
Whitehouse also highlighted changes in settlement patterns in Europe from
sprawling settlements to those clustered around fortresses. Their
discoveries, based on archaeological excavations, support the overall focus
on fortifying settlements during the late antique/early medieval period.
Pirenne had argued that towns began to change in appearance after the onset
of the Islamic invasions, but it appears that the historical and archaeological
sources reveal that this was already an ongoing process prior to the
expansion of the Islamic Empire in the seventh and eighth centuries.
84 Evans (1996), 221 85 Evans (1996), 222
51
The appearance of cities and towns certainly changed throughout the
sixth century. By 600, the “amenities of urban life” largely disappeared from
most cities, with buildings such as theatres and amphitheatres and city
councils.86 Materials were often extracted from these structures for building
material. In addition, many natural disasters and political disruptions
threatened the stability of these structures. Between 525 and 528, a fire and
two major earthquakes wreaked havoc on Antioch. After reconstruction, the
Sassanid Persians sacked the city, and according to Procopius, the Persians
left the city in ashes.87
For the next fifteen years, Antioch would suffer from plague, another
earthquake, and subsequent tremors. Public baths survived, however; in fact,
in addition to restoring Antioch’s main street and porticoes, Justinian built
and rebuilt public baths at Antioch, Justiniana Prima, Nicaea, Helenopolis,
and Nicomeda, but they decreased in size and ceased to be significant social
centers. It appears that significant social change occurred that made these
structures less socially important, contributing to the damage and decline
initiated by natural disasters and political instability.
Christianization seems to have contributed greatly to changes in
appearance of towns, especially to shifts in burial customs. By the late sixth
century, a cemetery church had been built on Temple Hill in Corinth. The
Theodosian ban on burial within city walls was no longer upheld by the turn
86 Evans (1996), 225 87 Evans (1996), 226
52
of the seventh century. In the last years of Byzantine occupation of
Tripolitania, in Libya, prior to the Islamic conquests, Christian graves were
constructed within the forum of Sabratha, a city rebuilt by Justinian. Evans
summarizes this transition: “The ancient concept which separated the
cemeteries of the dead from the urban space for the living had ceased to
exist.”88 The growth of the Christian church and monasticism transformed
social space, and clouded the social differences of the classical cities. Large
tracts of land and wealth acquired by monasteries and churches no longer
contributed to urban revenues – this eliminated a substantial tax base for the
Byzantine state.
Many cities appeared to “decline” – but the transformation of cities into
localized towns and villages is only considered a decline if higher value is
placed on the classical city. A shift in the balance of power between the city
and countryside occurred: the city’s economic dominance faded by the sixth
century. Most trade, Evans highlights, was local trade: approximately a
twenty-kilometer radius from the market center was the most important
distance of early medieval trade.89
Other archaeological studies on Byzantium have brought to light major
patterns of localization in ceramic production and distribution. Until the late
fifth to early sixth centuries, North African imports were strongly
represented in the eastern Mediterranean region. The presence of African
88 Evans (1996), 228 89 Evans (1996), 232
53
red slip fineware and amphorae in Byzantium appears to decline between
480 and 490, but partially recovers by the 530s.90 During the late sixth and
early seventh centuries, Byzantium witnessed a rise in localized fineware
production, and new finewares began to predominate locally. North African
amphorae were still prevalent until after the mid-seventh century, when
local imitations gained momentum, such as those uncovered in the northern
Aegean and Greece. The patterns of distribution of material culture became
re-centered around local production and transportation during this period,
likely due to the destabilization of long-distance trade routes.
Numismatic sources also provide evidence for responses to constraints
on the Byzantine Empire. Coins, Brubaker and Haldon explain, were issued
“chiefly to oil the wheels of the [Byzantine] state machinery”: the state made
payments in gold coin in the form of salaries to bureaucrats and the military,
who in turn paid for goods and services with this gold.91 From these goods
and services, the state received taxes in the form of gold. The state, therefore,
could collect most of the coin it issued into circulation, because Byzantine
fiscal policy generally demanded tax in gold. The Byzantine plurimetallic
coinage system meant that a base-metal coin was available for day-to-day
exchanges, and usually had a stable rate of exchange with precious metal
coinage. During periods of economic instability – such as the fourth and early
90 Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era c. 680-850: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 151 91 Brubaker and Haldon (2011), 119
54
fifth centuries and late seventh and eighth centuries – this rate destabilized.
As a result, inflation occurred and the state shifted to extracting taxes in kind.
Indeed, in the second half of the seventh and the eighth centuries, a large
proportion of tax in Byzantium was raised in kind. Of course, there were
regional and chronological variations. Where rural or urban markets existed
and were secure from attack, payments were still made in gold and bronze
coin. Metropolitan areas surrounding Constantinople, for example, usually
had little difficulty producing payments in coin. What preoccupied the
Byzantine state so severely during the late seventh and eighth centuries that
it demanded substantial tax payments in kind?
Warring between the Byzantine and Islamic states is a strong possibility.
First, the Byzantine Empire lost territory in Syria. Then, the Islamic Empire
continued westward through Egypt and much of North Africa. In fact, Maps
6, 7, 8, and 9 illustrate the shrinking of Byzantium’s territorial boundaries
from its height in 600 to 888.92 In the early to mid-eighth century, Byzantium
engaged in efforts to stabilize the frontier. Resources – food, building
materials, and labor – were necessary to the Byzantine state’s endeavors to
protect its frontiers and were more useful to the state than tax revenues in
coin.
92 See Maps 6-9 in Appendix, pages 81-84
55
Realignment of Mediterranean Networks: Muslim Spain, Eighth to Thirteenth Centuries
The Iberian Peninsula offers an additional zone of impact for the
narrative of the Islamic Empire. The geography of the Iberian Peninsula
created a unique direction of communication and commercial networks. The
peninsula is bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the east, the Atlantic
Ocean to the west, and the Strait of Gibraltar to the south. Prior to the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, travel away from the Iberian Peninsula
consisted largely of maritime voyages through the Mediterranean and the
Strait of Gibraltar, and this facilitated communication between al-Andalus
and other regions to the south and the east. Under the Roman Empire, the
Iberian Peninsula operated as a south-western periphery in which goods and
labor flowed toward Rome. After the Islamic conquests, the Iberian Peninsula
went in a new direction, one that facilitated an ongoing realignment of the
Mediterranean network.
In 675, an Arab army attacked Spain by sea, but the Visigothic fleet
successfully held them back. Nineteen years later, the Visigoth King Egica
accused the Jews in Spain of conspiring with the Muslims and began the
persecution of Spanish Jews. This offers evidence of internal tensions and
anxieties which could easily have contributed to Visigothic Spain’s
vulnerability to external threats. In 711, a Muslim Berber army crossed the
Strait of Gibraltar under the command of Tarik and defeated Rodrigo, the
Duke of Baetica.
56
After this defeat, Pirenne described, “all the cities opened their gates to
the conqueror.” The conquered territory became known as al-Andalus. Until
the Abbasid revolution in 750, the Umayyad caliph in Damascus presided
over al-Andalus. According to Olivia Remie Constable (1994), al-Andalus
became “marginalized” when the Islamic Empire’s center of power shifted
from Syria to Iraq with the rise of the Abbasid Caliphate. The increased
distance between al-Andalus and the center of power enabled the first
Andalusi amir, Umayyad leader ‘Abd al-Raḥmān I (756-788), to bring the
territory autonomy from the new Abbasid Caliphate.
The ease with which the Islamic Empire absorbed al-Andalus and the
later divisions of the Caliphate due to the internal crises of civil war and
revolution highlight the dynamism of world-systems that Abu-Lughod
emphasized. Despite the order that world-systems provide to combat the
disorder of frayed connections, power dynamics and communication routes
constantly shift. Maps 9, 10, and 11 especially illustrate the frequent shifts in
the expansion or contraction of states and that relationship to world-system
dynamics from 650 to 888 C.E. In particular, these maps highlight the
shrinking of the Byzantine Empire and the expansion and subsequent
division of the Islamic Caliphate into separate political entities. The many
processes which yielded all of the various states in the late ninth century
spanning from Western Europe to West Asia are beyond the scope of this
project, but the presence of these states is significant and should not be
overlooked.
57
From the ninth century onward, a range of locally-based farming
techniques were implemented in al-Andalus. This differs distinctly from
those implemented by the Islamic state under the earlier Umayyad Caliphate
in Western Asia, but still highlights the importance of agrarian production in
the medieval world. Excavations in the Murcia region in south-eastern Spain
have revealed extensive water management systems that remain embedded
within the landscape. Techniques used by medieval Muslim farmers to
manage water supply include: ponds used to store water from springs, wells
used to draw water from underground, water wheels, and systems of
acequias, or channels, that transported water diverted from a river by means
of a dam.93
Carolingian France and the Origins of Europe’s Economy
In his Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce,
A.D. 300-900 (2001), historian Michael McCormick attempts to situate the
Carolingian economy within a greater system of communication and
commercial relations linking the Charlemagne’s empire to other
Mediterranean powers. As McCormick emphasizes, the regional Carolingian
economy depended upon overland and maritime trade routes; in particular,
93 Johnny De Meulemeester, “Ethno-Archaeological Approaches to Medieval Rural Settlement in Spain and Morocco,” in Studies in the Archaeology of the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. James Schryver (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 169
58
long-distance overland communications increased during this period,
especially along the Alpine corridor, linking the Franks to Italy and its ports.
McCormick suggested that this increase resulted from internal (and
external) political stability. As king of the Franks from 768 to 814 C.E.,
Charlemagne initiated numerous policies to consolidate Frankish rule and
impose a uniform political authority over various conquered peoples. The
policies which most substantially contributed to political included the
creation of an improved communications network, regular assemblies of lay
and ecclesiastical officials, the issuance of imperial and regional capitularies,
coin reforms, and interregional diplomacy. All of this provided a politically
stable environment for communication and trade networks. Rosamond
McKitterick explains, Charlemagne was intent on being informed about what
happened within and outside of his realm and on hearing from his subjects.
To this end, he summoned and hosted regular assemblies of lay and
ecclesiastical magnates.
These assemblies operated as a forum for the ruler’s relations with the
political community and to organize military campaigns and exchange
military intelligence. Most importantly, Charlemagne used the assembly as a
means to gather news and exchange information, with participants in these
assemblies expected to arrive well-informed about events in their locales.94
94 Rosamond McKitterick, “The king and the kingdom: communications and identities,” in Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 223
59
Charlemagne issued capitularies, or collections of legislative decrees,
which dictated the administration of the realm and conquered regions.
Charlemagne issued regional capitularies soon after territories were
conquered, and these capitularies were locally circulated. Regional
capitularies, McKitterick continues, reflect the first stages of the imposition of
Frankish rule in newly conquered territories.95 These capitularies articulated
the principles on which Carolingian dominance and control were based, in
addition to imposing general administrative arrangements at the local level.
McCormick’s work demonstrates that an intricate study of the
communication networks of the early medieval period, using both
documentary and archaeological evidence, can reveal more about the
economic and political environment than what is (or is not) referenced in
documents. By tracing the changing patterns of communication across the
early Medieval Mediterranean, he has offered a new avenue for
understanding the place of Carolingian commerce and politics within the
context of the broader Mediterranean world. For example, McCormick has
examined both “virtual coins” – those referenced in documentary evidence –
and actual coins uncovered in archaeological digs, to demonstrate that an
inward surge of Arab gold and silver coins occurred around the Adriatic rim
during Charlemagne’s generation, with a large concentration of such coins
present in Venice c. 800 C.E.96 The presence of coins is not per se evidence for
95 McKitterick (2008), 244 96 McCormick (2001), 386
60
the presence of trade, McCormick argues that the presence of coins –
especially foreign ones – suggests the presence of people who carried them
and had contact with foreign places in some capacity.
McCormick concluded that coin finds clustered along travel routes –
roads, rivers, and mountain passes. Foreign coins in the Carolingian kingdom
were geographically limited to the edges of Carolingian power, revealing
Frankish efforts to control the circulation of coinage. The geographic
locations of Byzantine and Arab coin finds tend to overlap. The coastal areas
of northern Italy are especially dynamic: northern Italy acted as an
intermediary zone between the monometallic silver-based coinage of the
North and the more complex coinage systems of the Byzantine and Islamic
empires. The “virtual” coin finds, McCormick argues, fill in the blank spaces
left by archaeological data, suggesting that the distribution pattern of coins
mirrors that of communication, with a peak between 775 and 825.
In order to link coins, economies, and travel of the early medieval period,
McCormick focused on the people who traveled and what routes they took,
using travel narratives and itineraries to illustrate these networks.
McCormick emphasizes “communication,” as opposed to trade or commerce.
In defense of this, he argues that searching for evidence of communication in
the literature can provide more information than evidence of trade.
McCormick compiled a checklist of Mediterranean travelers, dating from 700
to 900, detailing people who traveled during this period. While travelers
between Western Europe and Southwest Asia were primarily engaged in
61
political embassies or religious pilgrimage, McCormick contends that these
kinds of communications also revealed patterns of commerce because state
and religious officials were some of the greatest consumers of the early
medieval period.
Out of the numerous documented travelers during this period, only
nineteen have been explicitly identified as merchants. McCormick
emphasizes that these nineteen merchants were only those whose
movements were “least imperfectly documented,” which further illustrates
the problem of how much data has (or has not) been recorded and
preserved.97 McCormick argues that snapshots of these merchants from
saints’ lives, legislative decrees, and toll regulations reveal where merchants
were at the moment they were mentioned. From these snapshots, McCormick
concluded that merchants frequently clustered together in customs posts,
towns, and cities. Further, McCormick suggests that if we can find
connections between these clusters, a system through which these nodes
were connected might be discovered lurking within the sources.
An interesting market appears to have fueled Mediterranean trade during
the eighth and ninth centuries: a market in slaves. In the late sixth century,
Rome did not have a notable slave market. However, McCormick notes, slave
markets in Southern Gaul and Naples did attract the attention of Gregory the
Great. In 595, Gregory had tried to buy English slave boys in southern Gaul to
97 McCormick (2001), 614
62
transport to Rome.98 By 701, however, the slave market in Rome attracted
the attention of St. Bonitus, bishop of Clermont. St. Bonitus had earlier tried
to limit the slave trade at Marseilles, and in Rome, he bought all of the slaves
he discovered and brought them back to Gaul.
In 776, Charlemagne heard that Romans were selling slaves to the Arabs,
and the pope countered that Greek slave ships had docked in the papal
harbor. The pope insisted that he had never stooped so low and that he had
never personally ordered such sales. The pope claimed that he had burned
the Greek slave ships and imprisoned their masters, and pointed out that
while he wanted to forbid this crime (that is, the crime of the sale of
Christians as slaves to non-Christians), “Charlemagne’s man in Lucca” failed
to obey his orders to attack the slavers.99 The Greek slave merchants,
McCormick explains, sailed along the Lombard coast and could buy slaves in
Rome.
The tale of the Roman slave market illustrates the trans-regional scope of
the eighth century slave trade. Not only were slaves sold out of Rome, but
slaves comprised a substantial share of European exports to Africa and Asia.
As McCormick notes, despite the difficulty in tracking slaves via documentary
evidence, the movement of people has physically left its mark. While slaves
were most likely shackled with wooden yokes or ropes, iron shackles, “the
98 McCormick (2001), 625 (footnote 29) 99 McCormick (2001), 626
63
very instrument of enslavement” that constrained captives’ necks, have
recently been mapped across central Europe.
Warfare in Europe – especially during the Carolingian period – produced
substantial quantities of war slaves. Many slaves were settled on estates to
work a ruler’s land, resettled in other parts of the Frankish empire, or held as
hostages. Not all slaves would have remained within the empire, however, as
slave exports to Asia and Africa continued to thrive. The exchange of human
bodies was active and persistent, indicated by legislative attempts to limit
the slave trade; “scarcely a decade went by,” McCormick explains, “without
someone prohibiting slave trading or closing down a slave market.”100
Without demand, this market could not have thrived as it had. There
would have been no incentive to hunt down and ship slaves across the sea.
By the mid-eighth century, the Islamic Empire had ceased its westward
conquests, and thus the flow of war slaves also waned. An outbreak of
bubonic plague in 745 also disrupted the demography and supply of labor in
North Africa. The urban mortality rate has been estimated at 25 to 35
percent during this outbreak.101 One economic consequence of the much
better documented plague outbreak of the fourteenth century was the
concentration of wealth among survivors and increasing demand for labor.
McCormick argues that a similar phenomenon may have taken place in
eighth-century Africa: the date of the first recorded effort in Venice to supply
100 McCormick (2001), 748 101 McCormick (2001), 753
64
slaves to the Muslim world (748) suggests that the Venetians were
responding to a spike in demand for labor stemming from the plague.
Moreover, slaves appear to have been cheaper in Europe than in the
Muslim world. Within the Islamic Empire, the prices of humans ranged from
59.4 to 637.5 grams of gold (200 dirhams to 150 dinars), with a mean of
348.45 grams of gold, at least three times higher than in the Byzantine
empire (63.75 to 127.5 grams of gold/15 to 30 dinars), and almost eight
times greater than within Carolingian Europe (37 to 51 grams of
gold). 102Therefore, a slave merchant could purchase human bodies for a
much lower price in Carolingian Europe than anywhere else in the
Mediterranean, and sell them at an exceptionally high profit. This profit
margin likely contributed to the growth of the eighth-to-ninth century
Mediterranean slave trade.
102 McCormick (2001), 756-757 (Table 25.1)
65
Context | Narrating the End of Antiquity
Pirenne’s Medieval World in Historiographic Context
McCormick concludes in Origins of the European Economy fueled the
economic and commercial growth of Western Europe. More broadly, the
image of early medieval Europe that emerges from his study is not the
“impoverished, inward-looking, and economically stagnant place” painted by
Pirenne.103 Far from dealing a deathblow to Mediterranean trade networks,
the Islamic Empire in fact provided the wealth and markets which would fuel
the first rise of Western Europe. The links between the economies of Europe,
Africa, and Asia traced by McCormick reveal that there is more to the story of
Mediterranean transformation than Pirenne imagined, and even more to
contribute to the narratives of the End of Antiquity and defining the
Medieval.
The debates surrounding the End of Antiquity have long centered on the
Fall of Rome. Even Pirenne, whose End of Antiquity occurred in the seventh
century – long after the Roman Empire waned and disappeared – was
preoccupied with Roman-ness. To Pirenne, the fifth and sixth centuries
experienced Roman political and cultural continuity. Even if his definition of
the End of Antiquity places the Islamic Conquerors at the scene of the crime
instead of the Barbarians, this narrative, like others, relies heavily upon the
Tragedy that is the Fall of Rome.
103 McCormick (2001), 797
66
Historian Peter Brown is credited with coining the term “Late Antiquity”
in the 1970s to define the third to eighth centuries as a period not of the
decline of Roman sophistication and civilization, but rather as a period of
“lively and positive developments,” of transformation rather than collapse. In
contrast, historian Bryan Ward-Perkins defines this period as a drop in
“economic and technological complexity, and in levels of material
comfort.”104 Roman culture certainly disappeared during Late Antiquity, and
Ward-Perkins credits this disappearance to changes in values, urban spatial
organization, and the disappearance of state programs operated by a
distinctly Roman political/administrative entity.
Pirenne’s interpretation of the Islamic invasions suggests that the
conquests caused rapid, debilitating change in the administrative and
economic systems of the Mediterranean world. A study of the timing, nature,
and effects of the expansion of the Islamic Empire, therefore, should either
support or contradict Pirenne’s interpretation. The Mediterranean had
already begun to transform prior to the seventh century. This in itself
challenges Pirenne’s thesis, particularly because he asserted that no dramatic
alterations – of any sort – had occurred within the Mediterranean world
between 400 and 600 C.E.
In The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the
Barbarians (2005), Peter Heather argues that the movements of various
104 Bryan Ward-Perkins, “The End of the Roman empire: did it collapse or was it transformed? Bryan Ward-Perkins finds that archaeology offers inarguable evidence for an abrupt ending,” in History Today 55:6 (June 2005), 12-16
67
nomadic groups on the “fringes of Europe” may have accelerated the
economic and cultural decline of Roman and post-Roman Europe.105 The
Avars, for example, appeared north of the Black Sea in the fourth century,
looking for a safe Haven from Western Turks. In the later fourth century,
Heather continues, the Guptas moved toward the “silk road” region from
northern India. By the early mid-fifth century, the Hephthalite Huns were
“ruling the roost” between the Caspian and Aral seas.106 As a result of these
relocations, the balance of power changed in Central and Western Asia as
other nomadic groups were forced to relocate or assimilate. Heather suggests
that these movements may also have impacted the movement of the “Huns”
and could have reverberated as far as Rome. Such relocations would also
have significant effects on regional demographics and political structures, as
well as cultural and economic systems.
Pirenne was certainly right in the sense that the advancement of the
Islamic Empire brought profound change to the Mediterranean world,
especially in terms of the evolution of new systems and networks in order to
adapt to a new world order. However, Pirenne appears to have incorrectly
identified the causes and nature of those changes. The early medieval period
can, therefore, can be perceived as a period in which a new world system
emerged out of a profoundly disorganized predecessor. This new system was
still organized along imperial lines, as it had been during antiquity, and
105 Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 150 106 Heather (2005), 150
68
covered a similar geographic space. This period, however, experienced a
dramatic change in the direction of trade and communication networks and
the rise of innovative systems of governance and administration. This change
can be especially seen clearly in the expansion, consolidation, urban
development, and reforms of the early Islamic Empire. Indeed, Europe’s
“small worlds” were intricately linked to the “greater world of the Muslim
economies”, links that would develop steadily over the next few centuries.107
World-Systems and Connections
A vision of the early Islamic Empire located within a Mediterranean
world-system is helpful for understanding these connections. World-systems
theory, borne out of Immanuel Wallerstein’s contemplations on the origins of
the European world economy, provides a narrative of economic development
and can be applied to the medieval world that does not limit our view to
isolated spheres of towns and villages. The medieval world can instead be
viewed as a larger network of interconnected communication and trade
networks across Europe, Africa, and Asia.
In a new prologue to The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture
and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century
(2011), Immanuel Wallerstein explains that his aim in 1974 was to challenge
the dominant, country-by-country narrative of economic development by
proposing a world-system approach that would allow a more complete image
107 McCormick (2001), 797
69
of economic development. Wallerstein specified that the term “world-
system” meant “not the system of the world, but a system that is a world and
which can be, most often has been, located in an area less than the entire
globe.” Such a system comprises of a set of mechanisms under which the core
receives surplus value from the periphery. For Wallerstein, the “core” took
the form of developed, industrialized parts of the world, the “periphery”
consisted of underdeveloped parts of the world that exported raw material,
and the market formed the means by which the core could exploit the
periphery.
Wallerstein claimed that over the course of the long sixteenth century
(1450-1640), a European world-economy emerged that was not an empire
and not a political entity, but was an economic entity as geographically
spacious as an empire. According to Wallerstein, what emerged was a
“world” system because it was larger than “any juridically defined political
unit,” and a “world-economy” because economic functions formed the
primary linkage between parts of this system, functions reinforced by
political arrangements and cultural links.108 This European world-economy
was distinct from earlier world-economies, because past systems were
defined by imperial political systems, such as those of China, Persia, and
Rome.
Wallerstein suggested that the development of modern capitalism and
scientific technologies enabled the new world-economy to thrive without the
108 Wallerstein, 15
70
emergence of an empire to provide a unified political structure. Past empires
appropriated surplus through tribute, tax, and political payments. In
contrast, the capitalist world-economy provided an alternative in which
political energy enabled secure monopoly rights. To Wallerstein, “Europe
alone embarked on the path of capitalist development which enabled it to
outstrip [other world economies of the sixteenth century].”109 This transition
was enabled by a new division of labor under a capitalist mode of production,
the ideologies of statism and state capitalism and the beginning of European,
especially Portuguese, overseas exploration.
Wallerstein’s approach treated the European-dominated world-system
that formed during the long sixteenth century as if its appearance was
inevitable. That the path of capitalist development on which “Europe alone”
embarked solely enabled the European world-system to “outstrip” other
world-economies was not convincing to urban sociologist Janet Abu-Lughod.
As a result of her work on the urban history of Cairo, Abu-Lughod concluded
that this capitalism-inflected, Eurocentric view of the medieval period,
proposed by Henri Pirenne and Max Weber, was ill-conceived.110 Instead,
Abu-Lughod produced a history of world systems between the thirteenth and
sixteenth centuries that she believed more accurately explained the rise of
European hegemony without assuming that the Rise of the West in the
109 Wallerstein, 17 110 Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), viii
71
sixteenth century was caused by factors internally inherent to European
society.
Wallerstein makes only a brief mention of the world-systems that Abu-
Lughod chose to investigate: the Eastern Mediterranean system comprising
of the Byzantine Empire, Italian city-states, and parts of Northern Africa; the
Indian Ocean-Red Sea complex; and China and Central Asia.111 In Before
European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 (1989), Abu-Lughod
intricately described the economic and communication networks of the
thirteenth through sixteenth centuries across Eurasia. Abu-Lughod produced
this monograph in response to the evolving world-systems approach to
global history pioneered by Fernand Braudel, Karl Polyani, and Immanuel
Wallerstein, which aimed to explain the history of capitalism and social
change. Abu-Lughod asserted, however, that the “Rise of the West” was not a
result of internal characteristics of European powers – such as European
culture and capitalism – but rather a result of the disintegration of pre-
existing world systems.
In Before European Hegemony, Abu-Lughod questioned whether the Euro-
centric “modern” world system that evolved from the thirteenth-century
world system was likely to persist, or if the world had already entered a
phase of restructuring. The world system that existed before European
hegemony began to break down prior to the Rise of the West, as the profound
“devolution” of the pre-existing system facilitated Europe’s “easy
111 Wallerstein 17
72
conquest.”112 Abu-Lughod intended to prove this sequence of events by
examining the world systems that existed before the sixteenth-century rise of
European hegemony.
This required a contextual focus: the geographic, political, and
demographic context in which development occurred “was far more
significant and determining than any internal psychological or institutional
factors.”113 The dis-integration that facilitated the development of the
sixteenth-century European world-system resulted from long-term
fragmentation of previously unified overland trade route regions and the
effects on maritime trade of the Black Death, which spread from China to
Europe between 1348 and 1351.
Abu-Lughod identified eight interlinked subsystems that could be
grouped into three larger circuits (the Western European, the “Middle
Eastern,” and the “Far Eastern”).114 The links between these subsystems
formed the thirteenth century world-system. Map 2 illustrates these eight
circuits:115 the trading towns of Champagne; the Venetian-Genoan-
dominated Mediterranean sphere; an Alexandria-Cairo-Red Sea complex; a
sphere spanning from the Eastern Mediterranean through Baghdad and
Basra to the Arabian Sea; a massive overland zone from the Black Sea
through Bukhara, Samarkand, and Karakorum to Peking; an Indian Ocean
112 Abu-Lughod (1989), 361 113 Wallerstein, 18 114 Abu-Lughod (1989), 33 115 See Map 2 in Appendix, page 79
73
circuit; and an East Asian circuit spanning from Peking through Hangchow,
Zaytun, and Canton to Malacca and Palembang.116
Abu-Lughod described the trade pattern of the thirteenth century as a
system which “involved a large number of players whose power was
relatively equal. No single participant … dominated the whole,” and “most
participants … benefited from co-existence and mutual tolerance.”117
Therefore, this system was not hierarchical: no single actor dictated the
terms of trade and production across the system, which instead comprised
several “core” powers (Arab-Persian imperial centers, Mongol and Chinese
imperial centers, and the trading towns of Flanders, France, and Italy), semi-
peripheries, and peripheries that became increasingly integrated by land and
sea as they engaged in both conflicting and cooperative relations.
Abu-Lughod described world systems as dynamic and living. In her
formulation, world systems rise when integration increases and decline
when connections between systems decay. The old parts of a pre-existing
system live on and become the materials out of which restructuring develops
and the new system inherits a set of partially organized subsystems.118 As a
result, players formerly peripheral to the system occupy more powerful
positions and geographic zones formerly marginal become foci and control
centers of system interactions. The world system of the sixteenth century,
116 Map 2 in Appendix, page??? 117 Abu-Lughod (1989), 362 118 Abu-Lughod (1989), 367
74
thus, resulted from a major change in the pattern of geographically-central
core regions.
Late Antique and Early Medieval World-Systems
In a similar way, the thirteenth-century world system emerged from
previous systems, specifically the eighth-ninth century system, which in turn
resulted from the breakdown of the remainders of the ancient world. Abu-
Lughod described the ancient world system as one that covered a similar
geographic span, but was structured along imperial lines by the networks
that connected the Roman and Han Empires through south and southwest
Asia. These two imperial powers had limited and indirect contact with one
another at multiple intervening places, contacts forged through travelers,
primarily merchants.
This system failed, Abu-Lughod continued, after the fall of the Roman
Empire and the loss of Han unity. This description helps to define antiquity
as a period that was not centered on the Roman Empire, but rather a period
characterized by a system of Roman-Han imperial relations that were
connected by a variety of subsystems controlled by a variety of actors across
the Eurasian and African continents. As a result of this new definition, we can
observe a major flaw in Gibbon and Pirenne’s narratives of ancient history:
the Roman Empire on its own cannot tell a complete story. Similarly,
Pirenne’s orphaned Western Europe offers an incomplete narrative of
medieval history.
75
The formerly integrated subsystems of the Mediterranean underwent
reorganization by the seventh and eighth-century consolidation of the
Islamic Empire and its extensions. Abu-Lughod concluded in her analysis of
late antique and early medieval world systems that it was this reorganization
that eventually culminated in the thirteenth-century world system traced in
Before European Hegemony.119 The consolidation of the Islamic Empire and
early attempts at unified administrative reforms facilitated the empire’s
expansion of overland caravan and seaborne trade routes. Thus, the
expansive conquests, urban development, and administrative reforms of the
early Islamic Empire indicate the presence of an already emerging world-
system in the seventh and eighth centuries.
Conclusion: Re-Viewing the Early Medieval Mediterranean
Pirenne’s vision of the Islamic conquests of the seventh century was an
image of rapid, debilitating administrative and economic change. According
to Pirenne, these systems were largely unaffected by the Germanic invasions
and the fall of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. Rather, he
suggested, the Islamic invasions swiftly unraveled the administrative and
economic fabric of the Mediterranean world and produced a dilapidated
Mediterranean economy.
Discontents with Pirenne’s thesis derived from problems with Pirenne’s
methodology and the validity of his arguments. Grierson (1959), for example,
119 Abu-Lughod (1989), 366
76
criticized Pirenne and other historians for scouring documentary sources
and archaeological data for evidence of trade. In documentary evidence,
mentions of merchants are scarce, and Pirenne interpreted this to mean that
merchants similarly were nonexistent in the early medieval Mediterranean.
Similarly, Pirenne’s critics and supporters used archaeological data and
numismatics to determine if trade occurred: coins themselves could not
reveal the processes by which they traveled.
Hodges and Whitehouse (1983) tested the validity of Pirenne’s argument.
They concluded that there was no coherent Roman cultural or economic
unity in the Mediterranean for the Islamic conquests to destroy. In particular,
metal production had declined long before the advent of Islam. Similarly,
McCormick (2001) suggested that the economies which had sustained the
Roman Empire collapsed. This intensified the vulnerability of the Roman
World to decay.
As illustrated by historical and archaeological publications of the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, these systems had already begun
to disintegrate or transform prior to the seventh century, and the conquests
could not have damaged the Mediterranean economy as Pirenne had argued.
The centuries preceding the consolidation of the Islamic Empire began and
facilitated this profound reorganization of the Mediterranean world-system.
McCormick challenged Pirenne’s contention that the Islamic Empire
destroyed the Mediterranean economy.
77
Rather, by creating an image of the Mediterranean economy as part of a
larger system of communication networks, McCormick highlighted that the
Islamic Empire as a political and economic entity actually facilitated
economic growth in terms of development, production, and exchange. The
Islamic state’s involvement in city-building, infrastructural development, and
fiscal administration created a flourishing economy with high demand for
luxury goods and labor.
Abu-Lughod’s analysis of thirteenth century world-systems has revealed
that the eighth-ninth century Mediterranean world-system evolved from the
ancient world-system and produced the thirteenth century world-system
when it began to disintegrate. This pattern of decayed connections and
restructuring of networks was not uniform across the entire Mediterranean,
but the persistence of this pattern from the fifth through the ninth centuries
(and beyond) is too significant to cast aside.
Thus, Henri Pirenne’s thesis was incomplete. The emerging Islamic state
wielded profound change on the Mediterranean world-system, but Pirenne
placed too much emphasis on the catastrophic effects of the growth of the
Islamic Empire on the West and not enough on the possibilities that the
economies and networks that the Islamic Empire offered. Not only did
Pirenne ignore the impacts of plague, natural disasters, and changing social
values on economic systems, but he incorrectly insisted that the Roman-ness
of the West remained until the Islamic invasions into the Mediterranean.
78
Appendix
Map 1. The Mediterranean World: Places mentioned 120
120 Edited from: Ancient World Mapping Center, “Europe, North Africa and West Asia: Regions” (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, November 2004)
79
Map 2. Abu-Lughod’s world-systems, thirteenth century121
121 Abu-Lughod (1989), 34
80
Map 3. The extent of the Roman Empire, 300 C.E.122
Map 4. The “Roman World”, 400 C.E.: Eastern and Western Empires123
122 “File:Byzantine Empire map.gif” Wikimedia Commons, last modified 3 January 2009. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Byzantine_Empire_map.gif 123 Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford University Press, 2006)
81
Map 5. The Roman and Byzantine Empires, 480 C.E.124
Map 6. The Byzantine Empire, 600 C.E.125
124 “File:Byzantine Empire map.gif” Wikimedia Commons (2009) 125 “File:Byzantine Empire map.gif” Wikimedia Commons (2009)
82
Map 7. The Mediterranean World, 650 C.E.126
126 Colin McEvedy, The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History (Penguin Books, 1961), 37
83
Map 8. The Mediterranean World, 771 C.E.127
127 McEvedy (1961), 45
84
Map 9. The Mediterranean World, 888 C.E.128
128 McEvedy (1961), 49
85
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